MCM Game On! Diamond Land! Bag, Mykita Dionne Frames, Berghain 10 Anniversary Book €30, Type Hype Set of 3 Notebooks €47 and Porcelain Plate, Bowl & Cup €149
I wasn't able to spend much time shopping in Germany (we spent most of Saturday just admiring the city and on Sunday everything was closed). But I did spot some beautiful shops and have since looked them up online, as a sort of virtual tourist. None of the websites were a let-down. Here are my thoughts:
Type Hype - The homepage was very engaging with links to favourite products, new designs, a gift finder, a product generator (you select the typeface(s) and product type(s) and it spells a word of your choice in products - so much fun!), inspirational information about producers... All the images were large and glossy, and you could swipe between them.
It was easy to navigate deeper and, once you found what you were looking for, the products were logically and attractively ordered, with appealing articles always appearing on the top. Encouraging messages about shipping, etc. were inserted between products. There were some small mistranslations (motives instead of motifs threw me for a second) but overall this did little to detract from a beautiful site.
Walther Koenig - The site design was nice and clean, with relevant categories on the top navigation bar - bookshop, special offers, publishing, antiquarian - a side bar giving details of events, linking to articles under 10€, etc. and two banners promoting specific, interesting products.
Calls to action could have be clearer (I accidentally started downloading something - an upcoming catalogue). And unfortunately I found no way to browse. 'Bookshop' presented 9 books - with a range of price points and detailed images - but you couldn't click 'more'; there seemed to be no way to reach their extensive catalogue. It may have been a bug, or to do with the browser I was using, of course. On the upside, search was good.
Mykita - This site was laden with lovely, detailed content, which might partly be because it has to be quite business-customer facing. The homepage presented lookbooks, campaign makings-of, details of collaborations with other brands... There was a blog, which posted their pressbook, for instance.
The top categories in the navigation bar were the different areas of the range - Sun, Optical, Collabs, Sport. Within these, you were presented a mix of purchasable and non-purchasable products. Alternatively, you could select eShop from the bottom of the nav bar, to view only products that were available to buy. I think this could confuse some customers.
As far as I could see, products were mainly ordered alphabetically, which is maybe not super-commercial, though you could filter very well. The inclusion of product features, brand background and design awards was exemplary. And on every product page (and there are very, very many product pages), there was a video of the relevant glasses worn by a fresh-faced model.
MCM - From the homepage, there were clear, prominent links to several areas of eShop, which is certainly not always the case. Otherwise, the relevant navigation bar categories were Men, Women, Travel and Gifts. The first subcategory of most of these was Explore and Discover, which presented selected products, editorial content, etc. - nice if you were just browsing.
To select some further subcategories at random: in Women's Accessories the products were grouped by type, and, when viewed on a smartphone at least, the colours drew you further down the page most effectively; Women's Bags were grouped by design and then model, which was sometimes slightly detrimental to the overall look. Filtering and sorting options were extensive and clear.
At the top of the Gifts page, there were two large images linking to exactly the same place, which seemed a bit of a wasted opportunity. Then there were links to two 'whimsical'/classic collections. I couldn't find a way to shop these collections - all I could do was view lookbook imagery - though that might have been me being obtuse.
Overall, a good page for a fashion accessory brand.
I hope you liked my little virtual tour (!) - enjoy the rest of your week.
Type Hype - The homepage was very engaging with links to favourite products, new designs, a gift finder, a product generator (you select the typeface(s) and product type(s) and it spells a word of your choice in products - so much fun!), inspirational information about producers... All the images were large and glossy, and you could swipe between them.
It was easy to navigate deeper and, once you found what you were looking for, the products were logically and attractively ordered, with appealing articles always appearing on the top. Encouraging messages about shipping, etc. were inserted between products. There were some small mistranslations (motives instead of motifs threw me for a second) but overall this did little to detract from a beautiful site.
Walther Koenig - The site design was nice and clean, with relevant categories on the top navigation bar - bookshop, special offers, publishing, antiquarian - a side bar giving details of events, linking to articles under 10€, etc. and two banners promoting specific, interesting products.
Calls to action could have be clearer (I accidentally started downloading something - an upcoming catalogue). And unfortunately I found no way to browse. 'Bookshop' presented 9 books - with a range of price points and detailed images - but you couldn't click 'more'; there seemed to be no way to reach their extensive catalogue. It may have been a bug, or to do with the browser I was using, of course. On the upside, search was good.
Mykita - This site was laden with lovely, detailed content, which might partly be because it has to be quite business-customer facing. The homepage presented lookbooks, campaign makings-of, details of collaborations with other brands... There was a blog, which posted their pressbook, for instance.
The top categories in the navigation bar were the different areas of the range - Sun, Optical, Collabs, Sport. Within these, you were presented a mix of purchasable and non-purchasable products. Alternatively, you could select eShop from the bottom of the nav bar, to view only products that were available to buy. I think this could confuse some customers.
As far as I could see, products were mainly ordered alphabetically, which is maybe not super-commercial, though you could filter very well. The inclusion of product features, brand background and design awards was exemplary. And on every product page (and there are very, very many product pages), there was a video of the relevant glasses worn by a fresh-faced model.
MCM - From the homepage, there were clear, prominent links to several areas of eShop, which is certainly not always the case. Otherwise, the relevant navigation bar categories were Men, Women, Travel and Gifts. The first subcategory of most of these was Explore and Discover, which presented selected products, editorial content, etc. - nice if you were just browsing.
To select some further subcategories at random: in Women's Accessories the products were grouped by type, and, when viewed on a smartphone at least, the colours drew you further down the page most effectively; Women's Bags were grouped by design and then model, which was sometimes slightly detrimental to the overall look. Filtering and sorting options were extensive and clear.
At the top of the Gifts page, there were two large images linking to exactly the same place, which seemed a bit of a wasted opportunity. Then there were links to two 'whimsical'/classic collections. I couldn't find a way to shop these collections - all I could do was view lookbook imagery - though that might have been me being obtuse.
Overall, a good page for a fashion accessory brand.
I hope you liked my little virtual tour (!) - enjoy the rest of your week.
